Saturday, 8 February 2014

(I had
to reduce a 10,000 word argument to 1,000 words, so it’s a bit ‘crammed’).

“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your
time and annoys the pig.” ~ Robert Heinlein

Pigs
are highly intelligent animals. They can learn their names by two to three
weeks of age, they can run a mile in seven minutes, and they taste nice in bacon
sandwiches. Life… it’s not fair, is it?

Ought
morality to be fair? If so, do we mean ‘equitable’ or ‘deserving’? Ultimately,
this is a neuroaesthetic problem (e.g. a cognitive bias towards utilitarianism or
elitism).

Sam
Harris proposes that the only coherent principle of morality is ‘the well-being
of conscious creatures’. I agree.

The real
problem is one of in[ex]clusivity. Sticking with our porcine metaphor: ‘All
conscious creatures are unequal, but some conscious creatures are more unequal
than others’. This is a variation of our earlier neuroaesthetic problem.

Admittedly,
breeding brainless livestock would reduce their conscious suffering. Is it then
moral? Arguably. But many would feel an aesthetic ‘wisdom of repugnance’ and sense
a slippery slope. If chickens, why not pigs? And if pigs, why not lobotomized human
work drones? My point here is that moral facts are inextricably linked to neuroaesthetic
values.

Applying
a variation of the equivalence principle, Sam Harris argues that facts about
well-being equate to moral values. I mostly agree, with some quibbles about
selectivity and performativity. On the surface, these are institutional problems
but their underlying cause is also neuroaesthetic (e.g. altruism versus greed).

Do
these quibbles falsify the principle? No. But without a sound system of
prioritization, it may be incoherent in practice. Prioritization (possibly
optimization) is another neuroaesthetic problem – all facts are uselessly indifferent
until contextualized in a narrative.

“There is no such thing as a fact. There are
only stories. Choose different facts, and you get a different story.” ~ Marty Gull

Can
moral facts be scientifically tested and falsified? Yes. They can be mapped and
navigated by empirical cartographers independently of cultural compasses – insofar as cultural institutions will permit
in practice.

The
real problem is one of persuasion, and the real question is always “Cui bono” (to whose benefit?). I
suspect that The Moral Landscape is
undermined not by de jure principle but
by de facto cynicism – selectivity and
performativity.

Assuming
evolution (and discounting intelligent design) we would be committing a
teleological fallacy if we claimed that morality evolved for any purpose.

It would be less erroneous if we simply claimed that communities (and shared cultural
values) evolved as a successful survival strategy. From this we can deduce that
morality evolved from a natural hierarchical pecking order into etiquette.

Homo sapiens evolved in the (mostly
insentient) natural world. Our intelligence evolved as another successful
survival strategy. Eventually, this sapient differential evolved into misrecognition. We began to see
ourselves as separate from the
natural world. Thus, I would argue that the essence of higher level consciousness
is not so much recognition as misrecognition.

However, this separation is a fallacy. In (physical) reality, sentience is an
emergent phenomenon. The artificial is still part of the natural world.

Morality can only exist in higher level consciousness. Facts can only be
contextualized and [mis]recognized within narratives. These are Wittgensteinian
language games which are inextricably linked to cultural practices.

Sam Harris proposes we should discard cultural relativism and quantify these
language games in terms of falsifiable facts about conscious well-being. However,
consciousness must precede
well-being.

This is a one-way logic gate. We can talk of consciousness without well-being,
but it makes no sense to talk of well-being without consciousness.

These qualities are entangled and interdependent, but we cannot be equitable
from first principle here. Unfortunately, we do not live in a deathless
paradise. Therefore, in the physical universe, we can only talk of survival and
morality in terms of priorities (e.g. dilemmas or conflicts of interest).

This is
the essence of morality. How do we choose? More importantly, if others
disagree, how do we persuade (or enforce)? Ultimately, persuasion comes down to
neuroaesthetics.

From
a pseudo-liberal perspective, the rise of religious fundamentalism is
ambiguous. It appears to be a Third World backlash against ultra-positivist
hegemony. However, it is simultaneously appearing on the political agendas of
the developed world. This suggests that fundamentalism may have deep-rooted
psychological and memetic causes as well as political and economic ones. Is
fundamentalism the inevitable sequitur to postmodernism, or are there more
sophisticated and pragmatic options (e.g. metamodernism)?

The
‘free market’ has created an institutional trap where rational individuals no
longer have even the illusion of free will. The profit motive dominates and
coerces: “If I don’t do it, somebody else will, and my family will be out on the
street…”

How do we dismantle institutionalized irrationality? How do we teach pigs to
sing?

When
confronted by meticulously reasoned falsification arguments, religious
fundamentalists experience cognitive dissonance. Their whole belief system is
challenged. However, instead of reconstructing their belief system, they
retreat into the psychology of denial and prevarication.

Capitalist fundamentalists exhibit similar behaviour. So, rather than being
different phenomena, dogmatic religion and dogmatic capitalism may be different
manifestations of the same underlying problem: irrationality.

There
is an obvious problem here. Most scientific research is not dependent on
funding from religious fundamentalists. However, it is dependent on funding from capitalist fundamentalists.

At the
moment, mainstream debates are dominated by the language games (and logic
traps) of ‘performativity’. Further separation of science and the humanities
can only make this worse. This is why I want to move in the opposite direction.

The
more we can engage the sciences in meaningful debate, the more we can bring the
concept of falsification to bear on performativity. It’s not the solution in
itself, but changing the language game is the only way forward – and I can’t
see any other way of doing it.

18 comments:

CP: Interestingly, there's no such thing as a sound premise. Counter-intuitively, even "I think, therefore I am" or "2 + 2 = 4" aren't sound ("I" is an emergent property rather than an essence, and Gödel proved that mathematics can't establish its own axioms).

Having said that, some axioms are more valid than others. I don't have a problem with the premise of The Moral Landscape. The well-being of conscious creatures is the least flawed axiom for morality I've come across – and far more rational than religious dogma. The problems start when we try to put the principle into practice.

Sam Harris argues that these are technical problems best solved by the scientific method. I mostly agree with him, but I think he underestimates the unavoidable effect of aesthetics on the 'measurement problem' and the vulnerability of science to political and financial narratives.

This doesn't invalidate his thesis. But I'm suggesting his thesis is incomplete.

* * * * * * *

CP: The definition of consciousness is still problematic, but neuroscientists are making huge strides in refining our understanding of how it works in practice.

If you haven't yet seen it, I highly recommend 'God is in the Neurons' as a way in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPEdDcs_8ZQ

Sam Harris starts with 'the worst possible misery for everyone' then suggests that ANY move away from this is a step in the right (moral) direction.

Although it could be argued that his premise tends more toward utilitarianism than elitism, he doesn't prescribe either. He simply suggests that well-being/suffering can be measured as physical facts, and these facts will appear as 'peaks' and 'valleys' in an empirical landscape.

There will be many peaks and many valleys, so there needn't necessarily be one 'correct' moral value system. However, since we can test and falsify facts, we can test and falsify moral values. This means we can also test cultural practices and pronounce moral judgments on them. If they lie in a 'valley of suffering', we can say they're morally wrong without being 'cultural imperialists'.

In principle, anyway. Persuading them is another matter. Especially if they hold the purse strings... :/

Interesting pisstake at the end. When it comes to semantics, reductionist methodologies (e.g. keyword frequency) are easily tricked. With language, context is all ;)

More generally, people who try to 'win' their theory are being unscientific. This is the problem of selectivity and performativity (e.g. status and funding).

All good scientists try to LOSE (falsify) their theory. If they can't, then they may be closer to the 'truth'. When people try to 'win' their theory, they're not being a scientist. They're being a politician.

When it comes to the 'truth', it's generally a good idea to trust scientists and distrust politicians. But what should we do when scientists have to play politics to get status and funding?

Nick Fraser makes some valid and discomforting points. But ultimately I disagree with him. It is better this film were made than not made, better watched than not watched, and better thought about than not thought about.

It presents the killers representing their crimes as ‘art’. Here they are, monstrously unmonstrous. Self-guiltless, they laugh and joke and sing. They re-enact their participation in mass murder as entertainment. Perhaps, for them, it’s a form of Aristotelian catharsis. For this detached Westerner, it feels more like Brechtian epic theatre.

I feel a hypocritical distance. But it’s a critical distance as well. The closer to home such atrocities get, the more uncomfortable my armchair feels. I see their kind in my country every day – banal and evil and self-guiltless. And, in my own way, I have taken part.

“Writing in 1944, Arthur Koestler was among the first to gain knowledge of the slaughter of eastern European Jews and he estimated that the effect of such revelations was strictly limited, lasting only minutes or days and swiftly overcome by indifference. Koestler suggested that there was only one way we could respond to the double atrocity of mass murder and contemporary indifference and that was by screaming.”

This YouTube post doesn’t have English subtitles, so I commend it only as a form of extended trailer. You need to understand the full banality of their thoughts to gain the measure of this film.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tILiqotj7Y

Comparative Case Study

‘From Barnes’ (1996) perspective, Life is Beautiful (1997) would be inimical to righteous anger that the Holocaust was allowed to happen. Although some might consider that the gap of time since the Holocaust should broaden our perspective to allow more pacific emotions, it might behove us to again look eastwards to recent allegations of rape camps and ethnic massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo. Would Life is Beautiful work as a redemptive comedy if transposed there, and for what kind of audience with what sense of humour?’

If you accept this premise then the deliberate infliction of suffering is an evil act. However, depending on context, it may be the lesser of two evils.

Religious dietary proscriptions are cultural traditions. Other than that they have no personal or metaphysical significance.

The method of slaughter is physical and (to the animal) personal.

Does the cultural upset of eating ḥarām or treif meat outweigh UNNECESSARY suffering? No. I give greater moral weight to the suffering of an animal in the present than the 'suffering' of historical practices which are physically incapable of suffering.

The real question is whether halal or kosher slaughter methods are UNNECESSARILY cruel. Religious belief is a misdirection here.

The real problem is that secular abattoirs are often far more cruel than religious ones.

"One time I took my knife and sliced off the end of a hog's nose, just like a piece of salami. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt and rubbed it on the wound. Now that hog really went nuts. It was my way of taking out frustration. Another time, there was a live hog in the pit. It hadn't done anything wrong, wasn’t even running around. It was just alive. I took a three-foot chunk of pipe and I literally beat that hog to death. It was like I started hitting the hog and I couldn't stop. And when I finally did stop, I'd expended all this energy and frustration, and I'm thinking what in God's sweet name did I do."

~ Gail A. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry

So I'd start with attacking the greater of the two evils.

See also:

The Singing Pig: A Reply to The Moral Landscape Challengehttp://martygull.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/chris-port-blog-352-singing-pig-reply.html

CP: I think it's important to bear in mind that Dhabīḥah and Shechita originated as the most humane slaughter methods available at the time. Both methods advocate that the animal must be killed quickly with respect and compassion.

As mentioned earlier, I think religious belief is a misdirection here. It's more a cultural practice.

Some questions:

1. Are we criticising the culture or the practice? From an animal welfare perspective, it has to be the practice and not the religious connotations. If the focus is on religion then we are merely using animal suffering as a pretext. To me, this seems at best hypocritical and at worst immoral.

2. Is expert throat-slitting (in a claimed environment of 'respect and compassion') more or less cruel than bolt-stunning and electrocution (allegedly frequently bodged) in profit-driven concentration camp conditions? There are some arguments that the former method is more humane.

e.g.

Shechita is not a painful method of slaughter, claims Jewish communityHenry Grunwald, The Telegraph, 1 April 2011http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8420154/Shechita-is-not-a-painful-method-of-slaughter-claims-Jewish-community.html#

3. If biblical era cultural practices were to be updated so the animal was unconscious before having its throat cut, would this be an acceptable compromise between animal welfare and cultural tradition? If so, such a compromise would require orthodoxists to budge on their insistence that the animal remain conscious.

They may see this as contradicting the literal 'Word of God', or the thin end of the wedge of an attack on the rest of their culture and beliefs.

With regard to the first fear, the 'Word of God' is already full of contradictions because it is communicated through the 'words of Man'. All religions have updated themselves by refining their interpretations. They evolve. That's how they survive. In this instance, methods of killing are not a metaphysical issue.

With regard to the second fear, there is probably some truth in this. Religion IS politics. And vice versa. After that, the arguments get complicated.

But the focus on animal suffering is simple. Overall, WHICH method of killing is the least cruel? This question can be answered factually by scientific methods. Religious beliefs don't come into it. So that's where I'd start. The rest is political posturing.

“In our modern world we’ve developed something that looks awfully like the left hemisphere’s world. We prioritise the virtual over the real. The technical becomes important. Bureaucracy flourishes. The picture however is fragmented. There’s a lot of uniqueness, the how has become subsumed in what. And the need for control leads to a paranoia in society that we need to govern and control everything…”

“… It turned out that Einstein’s thinking somehow presaged this thing about the structure of the brain. He said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant but has forgotten the gift.”

‘The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World’ Iain McGilchrist, Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, November 2010http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI

Despite what you've been told, you aren't ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’Amy Novotney, The Guardian, 16 November 2013http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/16/left-right-brain-distinction-myth

"Would anyone suggest that you would send someone to prison for documenting child abuse? Is there anyone who is going to run on that platform? Why in the world do we have a lesser standard for animal abuse? The answer is that animals are not people—but the broader point is that the health of animals affects the health of people."

'The Law That Makes It Illegal to Report on Animal Cruelty'Andrew Cohen, The Atlantic, 19 March 2014http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/the-law-that-makes-it-illegal-to-report-on-animal-cruelty/284485/

"If science could create artificial being indistinguishable from humans, wouldn’t they deserve to be treated with the same dignity as us? Second, and more disquietingly: if they were more intelligent than us, wouldn’t these beings also be more humane and compassionate than we are?"

Chapter 3: The Mind/Body Axis. (Is laughter created by an involuntary body or a voluntary mind?).http://martygull.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/chris-port-blog-148-humour-in-holocaust.html

Extract

However, the machine-functionalist model raises several intriguing possibilities. As well as pondering whether a computer could achieve consciousness (artificial intelligence) similar to that of a human being's natural intelligence, would it also be able to achieve a sense of humour as well (and which of our earlier theories of laughter might it be based on?). Such a prospect raises the symbiotic possibility that an artificial intelligence's sense of humour may be able to provide a definitive explanation of human humour. Alternatively, if human laughter is so irretrievably located in human being's particular neurophysiologies, objections of 'species chauvinism' may become irrelevant and we will be left none the wiser.

Unfortunately, the more pessimistic proposition looks likely. The American philosopher John Searle (cited in Rogers, 1999) opposes behaviourist and artificial intelligence models of the mind because he believes that such proponents 'find themselves in the absurd position of denying the existence of what it is they set out to explain: consciousness.' (Rogers, 1999, p.14). We have to concede that, if we do not have a sound theory of consciousness, we do not have any valid theory of humour.

Searle (1996) rejects attempts to remodel Cartesian Dualism in favour of accepting consciousness as just another related phenomenon of our biology along with respiration. In essence, Searle (1996) side-steps the problem of the mind/body axis by the simple expedient of suggesting that there is no problem. Instead, he appears to adopt a Wittgensteinian approach of accepting consciousness together with all of its related properties and the physical world as axioms and then analysing the language games needed to communicate with others.

Searle (1996) dismisses 'the traditional mind/body problem' thus:

'My own view is that we need to overthrow this problem... Once we see that so-called mental properties really are just higher-level physical properties of certain biological systems, I believe this problem can be dissolved. Once it is dissolved, however, we are still left with the task of analysing what is the central problem in the philosophy of language.' (Searle,1996, pp 22-23).

If Searle is correct then laughter would simply be a human biological property which should be analysed within the different contexts and language games in which it appears (in our field of study, dramatic texts, productions and receptions).

We conclude this chapter with the observation that a neurophysiological explanation of consciousness and humour within the mind/body axis remains as elusive as a single definition of comedy. If we remain with the intuitive sense of what it is like to be human and find something laughable then we have no explanation. Alternatively, if we try to explain consciousness and humour in terms of neurophysiology, the 'feeling' of it is somehow left behind.

From a pseudo-liberal perspective, the rise of religious fundamentalism is ambiguous. It appears to be a Third World backlash against neo-positivist hegemony. However, it is simultaneously appearing on the political agendas of the developed world. This suggests that fundamentalism may have deep-rooted psychological and memetic causes as well as political and economic ones. Is fundamentalism the inevitable sequitur to postmodernism, or are there more sophisticated and pragmatic options (e.g. metamodernism)?

When confronted by meticulously reasoned falsification arguments, religious fundamentalists experience cognitive dissonance. Their whole belief system is challenged. However, instead of reconstructing their belief system, they retreat into the psychology of denial and prevarication.

Capitalist fundamentalists exhibit similar behaviour. So, rather than being different phenomena, dogmatic religion and dogmatic capitalism may be different manifestations of the same underlying problem: irrationality.

“In sum, the results of our experiments, discussed in section 6, indicate that either one of the two features apparent in historical societal collapses – over-exploitation of natural resources and strong economic stratification – can independently result in a complete collapse. Given economic stratification, collapse is very difficult to avoid and requires major policy changes, including major reductions in inequality and population growth rates. Even in the absence of economic stratification, collapse can still occur if depletion per capita is too high. However, collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.”

Safa Motesharrei, Jorge Rivas, Eugenia Kalnay (19 March 2014)Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societieshttp://www.sesync.org/sites/default/files/resources/motesharrei-rivas-kalnay.pdf

Quantiphobia and the turning of morals into factsAdam Waytz, Scientific American, 25 March 2014http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/moral-universe/2014/03/25/quantiphobia-and-turning-morals-into-facts/

“My working hypothesis is that they make objective things that people prefer to be subjective. In other words, numbers make things more fact-like, and facts can evoke discomfort. My thinking on this stems from some research on which I have been lucky enough to collaborate, led by Jordan Theriault at Boston College. The research asks the question of whether people represent morals (e.g., “murder is wrong”) more like facts (e.g., “2+2=4″) or more like preferences (e.g., “chocolate is better than vanilla”), and does so by scanning people’s brains while they evaluate morals, facts, and preferences. Without getting into the details of the currently under review research, both neural and self-report evidence show that people tend to represent morals like preferences more than like facts.”

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua Greene – reviewJohn Gray, The Guardian, 17 January 2014http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/17/moral-tribes-joshua-greene-review

“An untestable idea is by definition unscientific, because science relies on verifying predictions through experimentation. Proponents of the multiverse idea, however, say it is so inextricable with some theories, including inflation, that evidence for one is evidence for the other.”

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About Me

I am a fully qualified teacher of Drama, Media and Film Studies with ten years’ work experience in secondary and further education. I graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama (one of the most respected Drama conservatoires in the world) with a first class Honours degree in Drama and Education and a PGCE.
I was a writer-in-residence and workshop leader for a Southend-based youth theatre for ten years, during which time I developed my creative writing skills to include playscripts, poetry and songs. With my deep interest in Film, I have now expanded these skills to include screenplays.
I now wish to take a sabbatical from teaching to focus on a proposal for a PhD thesis. This will involve developing new collaborative methodologies for intertextual musical theatre in the context of a resynthesis of art, philosophy and science.
My specific areas of interest and expertise are as follows: Academic, Acting, Analysis, Assessment, Auditions, Collaboration, Creative Thinking, Directing, Drama, Education, English, Film, History, Lecturing, Literature, Media, Poetry, Philosophy, Playscripts, Screenplays, Songs, Teaching, Television, Theatre, Tutoring, Workshops, Writing.

I’m writing a first draft for a musical. It's called Marty Gull (Marty[r] Gull[ible]). It's a surreal, satirical, tragicomic piece of musical political theatre: a cautionary tale of school politics, backstabbing egos and the state of the nation.

I’ve written the first draft libretto using a medley of melodies in my head from well-known musicals.

I would like to extend an open invitation to all budding musicians and composers to submit their own musical interpretations. I would also welcome interest from actors (age 20-25) who can sing and dance.

The plan is to develop a new collaborative form of musical theatre. Once we get a good working team of lyricists, composers, musicians, actors and designers together we can decide on the final evolution of the piece and arrange copyright accordingly. I would like to submit or even take the piece to Central as a work-in-progress.

Ultimately, I would be interested in using all of this as a springboard for a thesis on new art forms and musical theatre. But, most of all, I would love to have the opportunity of working with kind, creative and talented people.

If you like the sound of any of this, please post a comment at http://martygull.blogspot.com/or get in touch with me through one of the following methods: